Conveyors, of course, are generally used for the transport of many articles and, in particular, are utilized to a large extent to carry fruits and vegetables and other food products between various processing stations.
Generally, in the past, each food processing plant is laid out in a particular manner and the requisite conveyors represent custom installations to meet the particular layout requirements and if any change in the plant layout or disposition of the processing stations is required, the old conveyors usually must be discarded and a new custom set of conveyors must be installed at a substantially exorbitant cost.
Furthermore, in the case of food processing, sanitation is a prime and essential consideration, and most of the custom installed conveyors have provided ledges, pockets, and various horizontal surfaces which accumulate debris from the food being processed so that cleaning becomes a serious and difficult problem necessitating considerable down-time of the equipment to meet basic sanitation standards, particularly since portions of the conveyors are substantially inaccessible.